The Việt Nam Academy of Social Sciences (VASS), Agence Française de Développement (AFD), Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), Nantes University, École française d’Extrême-Orient (ÉFEO) and Agence universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF) have decided to hold a social sciences summer university called “Tam Đảo Summer School Week” as part of a partnership agreement for the period 2010- 2013. The objectives of this partnership are to develop multidisciplinary training of an excellent standard, to create a policy discussion platform and to attract a large academic and non-academic audience from the entire Southeast Asian region. This book is a verbatim transcription of the plenary sessions and workshop presentations and debates on the issues surrounding transition, held from July 16 to 24, 2010 in Hà Nôi and in the hill station of Tam Đảo. The concept of transition was studied in various situations according to four principal themes: i) agrarian transition, ii) economic transition through both quantitative and qualitative analyses, iii) field study methods in social anthropology of development, iv) demographic transition and familial transformation.